


Version 2 – How Fitz met Simmons

by stjarna



Series: “Leopold Fitz, engineering” – “Jemma Simmons, bio-chem” [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Bullying, Developing Friendships, Episode: s03e02 Purpose in the Machine, First Meetings, Flashbacks, Gen, Missing Scene, Rescue, SHIELD Academy, Season 3, Violence, physical violence, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 05:03:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7921558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stjarna/pseuds/stjarna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While they're waiting for the monolith to arrive at the English castle, Fitz tells Bobbi how he met Simmons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Her own footsteps are all Bobbi hears, echoing quietly through the corridors of the castle in Gloucestershire. Coulson had decided that everyone should try to get some rest while they waited for Mack and Daisy to arrive with the monolith. Bobbi had volunteered to stand guard. She opens the large wooden entrance door to check the outer perimeters. The rusty hinges screech loudly. Bobbi looks back into the hallway and hopes she didn’t wake anyone. She steps outside and stops.

He is sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, slightly hunched over, staring at something, so focused that he apparently didn’t even notice her despite the noisy door. She takes a step closer and sees that he is holding his cell phone. Bobbi catches a glimpse of a photo: a selfie of Simmons and Fitz in front of some kind of Mayan temple.

“Hey, Fitz.” Bobbi says, figuring he could use a friend.

 

* * *

 

The sudden sound of his name startles him. He turns around and sees Bobbi standing at the top of the stairs. For a moment he just stares at her, grabbing his phone as if it was a lifeline.

“Can’t sleep?” Bobbi asks.

He quickly wipes away a tear with the back of his hand and shakes his head. Bobbi walks down the stairs. “Only a few more hours,” she says and sits down next to him on the cold stone steps. Fitz nods, and looks back at the picture on his phone. He had been staring at it for hours; at least it had felt like hours since he snuck away from Coulson and Randolph after they had fallen asleep and Bobbi had started doing the rounds around the castle. It was his favorite picture and he had been staring at it every day since she disappeared 4714 hours ago: both of them smiling, excited about being in the field, inseparable. It was taken before his brain got messed up, before she went undercover in Hydra, before things had gotten so bloody complicated. If he stared at it long enough—he kept thinking—maybe he would go back there or maybe she would reappear, maybe they could finally figure out what they were, what they wanted to be, go on that date. He had held the reservation for months, held on to every sliver of hope that she was still alive. Now, they were so close to finding out. Why Coulson had thought he would be able to sleep was beyond his comprehension.

“How did you two actually meet?” Bobbi’s voice interrupts his thoughts once again. He looks at her, then back at his phone. He sighs. _Might as well let her distract you a little_ , he thinks, _Time’s certainly not gonna go any faster by staring at a picture_.

“Do you want the official or the unofficial version?” he says and turns his head towards Bobbi.

“There’s two versions?” Bobbi asks surprised, “I’m intrigued.”

“Well, officially, Jemma needed an engineer for one of her projects and I was the right guy for the task,” Fitz says matter-of-factly.

“And unofficially?” Bobbi inquires curiously.

Fitz takes a deep breath and another long look at the picture on his phone, “It was right after I started at the Academy. It was a weird time. I’m not exactly what you call ‘social.’ Kept to myself. Just worked on my own projects without involving anyone. Pretty sure my engineering prof, Winters, had my exit slip already signed and dated.”

“He thought you’d wash out?” Bobbi interrupts him.

“Pretty much. Couldn’t really blame him,” Fitz ponders before he picks up his story.


	2. Flashback

The night was pitch-black, clouds covering the sky, taking away what little light the moon would have provided. He had been working late on a project at the lab. Everyone else had left hours ago. He preferred to work alone anyways, so he had found the silence quiet enjoyable.

The footpaths across campus are completely deserted as he is heading back to his dorm room. The crunching of his own footsteps are all he hears.

Suddenly, three muscly figures appear out of the shadows of a tall tree. They drop their half-finished cigarettes to the ground, step in front of him, and block his path.

He rolls his eyes, “Oh, come on,” he mumbles to himself, “not that again.”

His muscles tense up, trying to prepare himself for what’s about to head his way.

The three bullies surround him. “Well, if it isn’t one of them science nerds?” the obvious leader says through his teeth and rips Fitz’s laptop bag from his shoulder. Pain shoots down Fitz’s arm at the sudden jerk. The bully dumps the contents of the bag onto the footpath. He lifts his foot and positions it right above Fitz’s laptop. Fitz closes his eyes and exhales slowly. He clenches his fist when the sound of a heavy boot smashing down onto his laptop reaches his ears. He shuts his eyes tighter. “Aww,” the bully whispers into Fitz’s ear, “Did we break your little toy?” The smell of his cigarette-laden breath makes Fitz nauseous. He doesn’t reply. He knows it won’t change anything. He’s been through it plenty of times. Had always been an easy target as the town weirdo. He had learned that not trying to defend himself seemed to work out best. The bullies always tended to get bored after a while.

The muscles in his stomach tense up as the first punch hits him. He groans. Involuntarily. He had never managed to keep completely silent. His body won’t let him. Next, they hit his face. Once. Twice. He sees stars, even though his eyes are closed, feels blood running down his nose, tastes it as it seeps through his half-open mouth. A kick with the knee in the ribcage. The impact makes him spit out his own blood. Another kick. He hears a rib cracking. Or was it two? A punch against his nose. His head flings back. Someone pulls his hair, keeps his head stretched back. He knows they want him to open his eyes, but he doesn’t want to give them that satisfaction. A punch against his temple. His ears start ringing. His eyes force him to blink, trying to wash out the blood that’s running down from his split eyebrow. The bully’s hand pulls his hair, forcing his body forward. Another knee-kick to the stomach. He can feel the sour taste of acid creeping up his esophagus. He coughs, gags. He can feel that he is about to pass out.

 _Let it be over. Just let it be over_ , he thinks, when a British voice interrupts the ringing in his ears.

“You stop this _right now_!”

Suddenly, the hands that had been holding him, punching him, let go. Fitz drops to his knees, too weak to hold himself up. Hunched over, he tries to steady himself with shaking hands, spewing a gush of vomit onto the ground. His head is spinning. His ears are ringing. Slowly, he opens his eyes and raises his head. He stares at the blurry silhouette of a woman.

“Or what?” he hears the leader of the bullies ask and sees him taking slow, intimidating steps towards the petite, slim figure, “Maybe you want to join the fun, pretty face?”

Blood is clouding Fitz’s vision, but through a haze of red, he watches as the bully grabs the woman’s arm.

“You let go off my arm _this second_ , or else…” Fitz hears her say, determined, unfazed.

“Or else what?” the guy replies.

Fitz sees her raise her other arm. She’s holding something in front of the bully’s face, but he can’t identify it. Only when the bully lets go off her arm, covers his eyes, and starts cursing, does it dawn on Fitz that she must have used some kind of pepper spray. The bully drops to his knees. _Quite the concoction_ , Fitz thinks as the spinning in his head slowly fades.

The bully’s buddies run to their leader’s rescue. “Little bitch!” Fitz hears them yell, “Stupid cunt!”

And she is holding up her spray bottle. Stares them in the face. Fearless.

“Did I mention that I already called the police?” she yells at them and her words make them stop dead in their tracks.

Fitz hears someone mutter “Fuck,” and a moment later sees the two guys take off running, dragging their cursing leader with them.

The adrenaline that had allowed him to make it this far, seems to rush out of his body as quickly as it flooded it. The arms that he’s relying on for support begin to shake. He bends forward, barely avoiding the puddle of vomit, and lets his forearms sink to the ground. He closes his eyes, and drops his head onto his arms, trying to catch his breath. The ringing in his ears slowly subsides, his head is starting to think more clearly. Suddenly, he feels a hand on his back, a gentle touch, non-threatening. He opens his eyes and slowly tries to push himself up into a kneeling position. A sharp pain in his ribcage makes him flinch and moan. His right hand instinctively wraps around his own torso and reaches for the painful spot on his left where the bully had kicked him. He looks at the woman kneeling next to him. Her right hand is still resting on his back. The spray bottle she had used lying next to her on the ground. She reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a cell phone. Her eyes are focused on the device as she dials; yet her thumb is reassuringly stroking his back.

“Yes, I’d like to report a physical assault…” he hears her say to the person on the other line. He only catches bits and pieces of her phone conversation as his mind drifts in and out of a foggy haze. She describes the attackers. _Spot-on_ , Fitz thinks, _down to the last pimple_. _Photographic memory_ , he assumes.

She hangs up and tucks her phone back into her pocket. Gently, she grabs his face with both hands. Her right hand leaves nothing but a warm sensation on his back. He flinches as her thumbs carefully examine his bruised jaw, cheekbone, and swollen eye. He can barely see, yet he can’t stop looking at her. His brain is still trying to catch up with the whole situation, trying to figure out what just happened. Suddenly it dawns on him.

“You _hadn’t_ called the police?” he mumbles.

She briefly stops focusing on his bruises and looks directly at him, “No,” she admits, “and luckily they also didn’t realize that the _stupid_ spray bottle only had one dose in it.”

He stares at her, “You were bluffing.”

The hint of a smile flashes across her face, but she doesn’t reply. She focuses back on his injuries.

“That’s a pretty deep cut. It’ll need stitches,” she comments on the injury above his eye.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“They’ve done this before?”

“Well, not them _specifically_. Guess I’m an easy target,” he mumbles and slowly reaches for the shattered remains of his laptop, grimacing as his ribcage and most every bone in his body ache.

“Fantastic,” he says sarcastically as he picks up pieces of hardware.

“Can you fix it?” she asks, “You’re in engineering, right?”

“How do you know that?”

“Leopold Fitz, no? We’re in Thermodynamics together.”

“Oh,” he replies surprised.

“I’m Jemma Simmons, bio-chem.”

“I know that.”

“Well, you made it sound like…” she responds somewhat defensively.

“Yeah, I know, I… It’s just… I was surprised because being in the same class with me doesn’t always mean people know me…. I’m not good with people,” he replies apologetically.

She smiles sympathetically and calmly says, “The police should be here soon.”

A nod is all he manages.

She keeps looking at him. With a kindness he has rarely experienced. It is comforting and makes him uneasy at the same time.

“So, what was the stuff you sprayed him with?” he asks, desperately trying to break the awkward silence, “Didn’t seem like regular pepper-spray.”

“Gosh no. That would be _far_ less effective. It’s a chemical mix I’ve been working on. I want to specialize in non-lethal weapons.”

“Seems to work well.”

“Yes,” she agrees, “although I’d like to come up with a better idea to… well… distribute it. These small spray bottles only hold one dose. The size of the larger ones makes them impractical. It seems highly ineffective. There should be a better way to do this.”

“Shouldn’t be hard to engineer something small with multi-dose capacity,” he remarks almost absentmindedly.

“That would be brilliant,” she replies excitedly and smiles widely.


	3. Present time

“She stayed with me until police showed up,” Fitz tells Bobbi, “I had to stay home for a few days to rest. Doctor’s orders. A couple of broken ribs, some serious bruises, mild concussion, cut over my eye that needed stitches, like she had said. She found my e-mail address via the class list and sent me assignments and her lecture notes for Thermodynamics. I didn’t understand why she did all that. And I was petrified of the thought of having to see her again. Didn’t know what I should say. How to thank her. I’ve never been good with words.” He takes a deep breath, “So, next Thermodynamics class, I went to her usual desk and left her a multi-dose dispenser I had developed for her spray.”

“You clearly took bed rest very seriously,” Bobbi remarks and Fitz chuckles in agreement.

“I didn’t dare to turn around for the entire class. And when class was over, I took off as quickly as possible. I wasn’t used to someone being this nice to me, standing up for me. Didn’t know how to deal with it. Somehow, I was afraid that if I tried to interact more with her, she’d turn out like all the other name-callers and bullies that had haunted me all my life.”

“That doesn’t sound like Jemma.”

“No it doesn’t, but I had been burnt too many times. Just was skeptical of all good intentions. But Jemma didn’t want to accept my little engineering gift silently.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Next day, she showed up with Weaver and Winters. Weaver introduced us officially: ‘Leo, this is Jemma Simmons, bio-chem. Jemma, this is Leopold Fitz, engineering.’ She said that Jemma was working on something and needed an engineer,” Fitz pauses for a moment, “Jemma never told me how she convinced Weaver and Winters that it had to be me specifically.”

“She can be very convincing,” Bobbi notes.


	4. Flashback

“I realize that you prefer to work alone, Leo,” Winters says in his usual grumpy voice, a voice of disapproval, a voice that seemed to be waiting for Fitz to fail and wash out.

Fitz looks from his professor to the bio-chem standing next to him. Her smile radiates the same kindness he had witnessed just over a week ago.

“What are you working on?” Fitz asks her directly.

Through the corners of his eyes, he sees Weaver’s and Winters’ jaws drop to the floor. They fall silent, as he, the anti-social loner, shows interest in somebody else’s work. Their surprised reaction gives Fitz a strange sense of satisfaction.

“I have had this idea for developing a non-lethal, dendrotoxin-based weapon that knocks people out quickly.” Jemma replies, completely focused on him, “Something with heavy stopping power. _Poof!_ Night-night! But distribution…”

“A hollow bullet, maybe?” he replies, instinctively knowing what she is about to bring up.

“Yes, although it would be…” she continues.

“…a challenge to keep them from breaking in the chamber,” he finishes her sentence.

“Exactly, and to find the perfect dose.”

“Right! Lots of factors that need to be…”

“…taken into consideration.”

“Aaaaaaalllright,” Weavers voice interrupts their brainstorming session, “We’ll let you two work on this for a while.” She nudges Winters with her elbow. When he doesn’t react, she grabs the befuddled engineering prof by his arm, turns around, and slowly pulls him with her out of the lab.


	5. Present time

Fitz looks back at the picture on his phone and sighs, “And that was it. We became lab partners,” his thumb gently strokes her face on the screen, “Took us seven years to come up with a working night-night gun prototype. Although, she never allowed me to call it that. I kept trying to remind her that she had given me the idea for the name. Well, I.C.E.R. does sound better to be honest.”

“Did you ever talk about what had happened when she saved you from the bullies?” Bobbi asks.

Fitz sighs, “Not at first. We worked together for weeks before I finally found the courage to thank her for what she had done.”

“Weeks? Really?”

“Yep. Remember the part where I was a bit socially awkward? … I mean… even more than now.”

Bobbi giggles, “So, what gave you the courage to do it?”

“Well,” Fitz recalls, “We were working late at the lab and decided to order food so that we could keep going. Not sure why, buy I asked her why she wanted to specialize in non-lethal weapons…”


	6. Flashback

“I want to give good people a chance to protect themselves against the bad guys,” she says and adds, “without killing anyone. ‘Cause I’m really not a big fan of killing people. The bad guys and bullies always seem to win and that’s simply wrong. It has to be stopped.”

He looks up from his Tikka Masala and takes a deep breath, “Thanks for not letting the bullies win… that night.”

“Well, of course!” she simply replies and pauses briefly, “And come to think of it… It was lucky for me too, because I got the best lab partner I could wish for.”

“You don’t have to say that,” he says coldly and looks back down at his food. His instincts tell him that she’s mocking him.

“But I mean it, Leo! I really enjoy working with you and I greatly appreciate our friendship.”

He looks back up at her and sees her genuine smile, the sincere look in her eyes. His heart is racing, and his breathing quickens as emotions flood his body. He’s unable to stop tears from streaming down his face.

“What’s wrong?” she asks him, full of concern, “I apologize if I said something …”

“No one has ever called me their friend before,” he tries to explain. His voice is shaking.

She reaches out her hand and touches his arm. No one besides his mum had ever done that. Fitz’s instincts want him to pull away, but she leaves her hand there and somehow it feels natural and familiar. She is looking straight into his eyes, down into his soul it seems and replies, “Well, those people were _clearly_ idiots and have _no_ idea what they’ve been missing, Leo.”

He stares at her, this incredibly smart and kind woman who had stepped up to guys two-and-a-half times her size, stopped them from kicking him to pulp, who was collaborating with him on all these projects, calling him her friend. He stares at her, searching for words, searching for something to repay her kindness. His mind is a complete blank. He stares.

_Say something_ , he thinks, _anything_.

And his mind complies.

“I hate being called Leo,” he hears himself say matter-of-factly.

_Anything, except that_ , he thinks and drops his chin to his chest in shame.

“Oh,” he hears her reply and wants to sink into the ground, disappear, “Well, thank you for being so honest with me. That’s very important in both a friendship and professional partnership.”

He looks back at her, amazed by her genuine positive reaction.

She pauses and he feels like he can almost see her brain think.

“It seems to be common practice among S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to address each other by last names only,” she finally remarks, “I could call you Fitz.”

“And I could call you Simmons.”

“That seems very professional of us, don’t you think?”

“It does,” he replies and smiles.


	7. Epilogue (Present time)

“And FitzSimmons was born,” Bobbi interjects.

“Pretty much,” Fitz says, “It all began when she saved me from those bullies, when she reached out to me, got me out of my shell, made sure I didn’t wash out of the Academy. Barely spent a day without her after all that. Well, except for when she went undercover at Hydra.”

The mention of her time at Hydra triggers a flood of memories. His mind wanders back and forth through the past few years. Flashbacks. Everything they had gone through. All the ups and downs. The fights. The laughter. The disagreements. Finding a way to forgive each other and start over again. Their relationship had evolved from strangers, to lab partners, to friends, to best friends, to … He stops mid-thought. It hadn’t evolved further. They hadn’t been given a chance to evolve it further. The monolith had taken her from him. And now he was waiting for the monolith to arrive, to give him a chance to see if there was still hope.

“I know she’s alive,” he mumbles as he looks lovingly at her picture, “I know she is.”

He looks at Bobbi, who smiles encouragingly.

The roaring engine of the Zephyr disrupts the quiet night. The monolith has arrived.


End file.
